Red Shirts [Evan]
Aug 21, 2013 15:37:33 GMT -5
Post by Tomer Berelowitz on Aug 21, 2013 15:37:33 GMT -5
Class was only a month in and Tomer was exhausted. His classes had all been arranged carefully, with training in the afternoons and a long study period right after lunch so he could go down to the nurse and nap. But it was the emotional aspect of things that drained him more than the physical, even though trying to navigate the halls during passing time was like six five-minute slices of hell. The small humiliations and embarrassments (the trips, the falls on the stairs, all the dropped things, the untied shoelaces) and the big ones (the stares, the whispers, the pity, the aide who helped him in the cafeteria line at meals, the other who sometimes helped him shower), all added up over the course of the day till Tomer felt his face would melt off from the heat constantly there.
School had been the one place he could quietly excel. He'd been bullied too much to call it a refuge, but school had always been something Tomer could take comfort in, in the routine of it and in how his intelligence and hard work could be empirically proven. He was good at school. It was as much a blow as the wheelchair when his Hammel teachers (who knew what he was dealing with) had told him to tell them if he needed his homework level adjusted. Stubbornness (and not pride, he'd searched himself and it wasn't that) kept him from doing so. Besides, the homework gave him an excuse to hole up in his room and it kept his mind off of the day's varying levels of mortification. He'd already ended up crying over the phone to his dad twice, though there had been a great deal of homesickness in the second call as well.
Today he only had math, his easiest subject, and it wasn't a taking-a-shower night, so that stress was absent too. Tomer sat alone in the courtyard outside the dorms, away from the other kids lounging and talking and doing whatever. It was a relief to not have to move, to be able to just sit without having to worry about things rolling off his desk or if the aches he sometimes got near the end of the day would make him late to his next class. But a still body meant anything but a still mind. Tomer tried to think of the more pleasant aspects of his day; the lunch had been good, he hadn't tripped on the stairs going down or up. But really, Tomer thought that if his days were notable now for not falling, it was kind of...
Well. His life.
Poop.
School had been the one place he could quietly excel. He'd been bullied too much to call it a refuge, but school had always been something Tomer could take comfort in, in the routine of it and in how his intelligence and hard work could be empirically proven. He was good at school. It was as much a blow as the wheelchair when his Hammel teachers (who knew what he was dealing with) had told him to tell them if he needed his homework level adjusted. Stubbornness (and not pride, he'd searched himself and it wasn't that) kept him from doing so. Besides, the homework gave him an excuse to hole up in his room and it kept his mind off of the day's varying levels of mortification. He'd already ended up crying over the phone to his dad twice, though there had been a great deal of homesickness in the second call as well.
Today he only had math, his easiest subject, and it wasn't a taking-a-shower night, so that stress was absent too. Tomer sat alone in the courtyard outside the dorms, away from the other kids lounging and talking and doing whatever. It was a relief to not have to move, to be able to just sit without having to worry about things rolling off his desk or if the aches he sometimes got near the end of the day would make him late to his next class. But a still body meant anything but a still mind. Tomer tried to think of the more pleasant aspects of his day; the lunch had been good, he hadn't tripped on the stairs going down or up. But really, Tomer thought that if his days were notable now for not falling, it was kind of...
Well. His life.
Poop.
